Gunmen kill two former rebel commanders in Daraa

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Two former rebel commanders were killed and one more wounded Thursday in an attack by unknown assailants in southern Daraa province.

The gunmen opened fire on Adnan Abazid and Motez Qanat near the town of al-Nakhla east of Daraa city, according to Zaman al-Wasl reporter.

In 2019 alone, there were at least 305 assassination attempts recorded across Daraa province, according to the Daraa Martyrs Documentation office, a local monitoring group. Assassinations and disappearances have targeted all sides in Daraa’s messy post-conflict politics, according to Middle East Eye.

Rebel groups held on to some of their weapons, and local reconciliation committees were left with a degree of autonomy not seen in other areas of Syria. The result was a complex patchwork of localised truces.

Former rebels then started the first rumblings of a low-level insurgency, targeting Syrian army and intelligence officers, reconciliation negotiators and former rebels they deemed to be traitors for working alongside Damascus. Unrest followed soon after the actual conflict ended in Daraa, and has become more of a threat to local stability ever since, Middle East Eye reported.

Also in Daraa province, three brothers died of torture by intelligence services, relatives said Thursday.

Hussam, Haitham and Ahmed Abu Halaweh were former rebels but they tricked like hundreds of Syrian fighters that the Russian-brokered reconciliation deal in southern Daraa province will end the bloodshed and they can live peacefully.

The regime security said at the time all rebels who laid down the weapon should join the army or being detained. Most of the detainees have been tortured to death, local monitoring groups and activists said.

Syrian opposition sources said that more than 500,000 prisoners remain inside the prisons of the Syrian regime.

A report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights revealed the numbers of detainees, disappeared and the deceased in Syrian prisons, documenting 13,197 civilians killed under torture, from March 2011 until June 2018. According to the report, that included 167 children and 59 women, while at least 121,829 people are still under arbitrary detention or enforced disappearance, with around 87% in regime detention.

The nine-year-old war has claimed the lives of 390,000 people and forced 13 million people from their homes, half of whom have left their shattered homeland.

Zaman A Wasl